Any 19x19ers into martial arts?

My experiences:
Some Kali - highly recommended to anyone who really wants to kill people with a knife (or seriously injure them with a stick). No-nonsense and deadly. A bit silly because of this "practical" nature (if you really need practical self-defense, get a gun - using a knife is much harder but has the same legal repercussions), but a lot of fun.

Some Capoeira - it looks incredibly beautiful when proficient players do it, but I was never able to get anywhere, though studying quite diligently. Love watching it though, and join in on the singing and clapping.

A little Tai Chi - just one course in a community centre. I'd love to do more. It's not much of a martial art but it teaches the body to move as a unit and the forms are a kind of meditation. Plus it looks pretty.

It is very much a martial art, and one of the most efficient. The form seen most often in the west is really Taiji Lite, dumbed down originally for the California hippy type of audience - but excellent in its own way, nonetheless. It is a thorough form of aerobic exercise where you don't sweat, so it's good for lunch hours in the office, and you can practise discreetly at the bus stop.

The original forms are, however, now being seen more and more in the west, and one of their attractions is that there are forms involving weapons: sabre, broadsword, spear, fan - and modern adaptations for walking stick and wumbrella.

I have a friend who teaches advanced Taiji and helped him with Chinese translations on some books he did, so I know a fair bit about this art.

Aikido has a very good reputataion, too, but I'm not familiar with it.

Embrace Tiger, Return to the End of the Queue

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I was in the tai chi class in my community college this last term. It definitely does have some amazing martial applications, which the instructor occasionally pointed out (and really brought some meaning to the motions). Unfortunately, the class really was about the meditative aspects, and not so much the martial. Would love to continue this at some point, especially with a "martial" emphasis.

I also started tae kwon do a few years ago. It was a lot of fun, and I am thinking about starting again. But first I want to look into what other styles are being taught in the area.

Been doing shotokan karate since I was around 9 years old, and some fifteen years later I'm still very much into it. Tried some capoeira but couldn't get my head around the ginga.

I was foreced against my will to take martial arts as a kid. But I didn't mind since it was viewed as cool by my friends. When I was 4 I took karate until I was 7. After that I took jiu jitsu until I was 9, and then I took tae kwon do until I was 13. It was the only one I took until I got my black belt. In high school I was on the wrestling team, if that counts. This is where I shined. I don't think I was old enough to understand the nuances of the martial arts when I was a kid. When I was in high school I was better equipped to understand the rationale behind the movements and the techniques. Not to brag but I kicked-ass at wrestling. To date it's still my favorite sport. After high school I dabbled in kendo but never had the time to keep up. If I did have the time I'd probably try enshin-ryu (a close relative of kendo) or pekiti tursia. Pekiti tursia is a Philipino martial art based on the knife. I was drawn to this since I hold knives every waking moment of my life. Maybe jeet kun do because I'm a huge Bruce lee fan but I want to learn a weapon because of the expression side of the art and not so much the practicality.

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I love capoeira. I've been doing it for 6 years now and I'm still quite obsessed. I feel a bit behind on the musical aspects (although I'm trying to improve that) but the movement is what really gets me going. It's been fascinating to see it infiltrate the way I move in subtle ways outside the game (as well as unsubtle ones when I get bored and start kicking things).

Capoeira is amazing because there is nothing I "understand" about it on which I have not completely changed my mind since I started, and I have every confidence that that will continue. That also helps me to say nothing and smile when people tell me capoeira "is just the one where you dance around each other."

I have been trying and failing to sythesise a dual capoeira/go philosophy for some time, although it's still a fun thing to attempt.

I practiced Taekwondo for a couple of months - enough to get a yellow belt.

I attended about three sessions of my undergrad school's "Ninjutsu Club", but it was very unorganized. I think the only thing that I learned at that club was a particular method of kicking.

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be immersed

I never understood how anything that claimed to be a secret art possibly could be.

As a kid, I did some judo - enough to get my orange belt, but I never got really hooked. Then, when I was around 20, I took kenpo karate lessons and get my green belt.

I took wing chun classes for a few weeks but I had to stop for various reasons. The first being that I lost my job and I needed to save every dollar I could (and the fuel to get to my classes did count) ; the second was that I was in terrible, terrible shape. When the warm-up was over, MY class was over. I was really a wreck of a man. When the teacher politely came to me during a break to suggest I could take a shower during breaks, I realized how much I was sweating and stinking. I was in a very depressive mood back then and this just killed my interest for the class, which is a shame because I really had a lot of fun then.

Right now, I haven't taken martial arts for years and I decided a few days ago that I'd get back to my karate lessons. I'm in a WAY better shape than I've been in years and I want to work on keeping myself in top shape.

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Jujitsu for a while when I was a kid (because my parents made me - so I didn't appreciate it). Later Wing Chun (like SolarBear) which I liked much more but the PhD got it the way (and having Sensei say "try and hit them" on one hand and puny girlie opponents who cried on more than one occasion on the other was a bit of a bummer. I'd really love to do that again but I don't have the time and by the time I can take my daughter along to the local club we'll have moved cities. ho hum

edit: actually the city I'm moving to this year looks like it has a good club..

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I am John. John-I-Am.

I'm an assistant taekwondo instructor, and also practice muay thai, boxing, and bjj...i compete in mma

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"Only a warrior chooses pacifism; others are condemned to it."

I took judo as a child, then briefly took a goofy korean fake art called "chung moo quan" that turned out to be a scam run by a tax cheating ex-janitor who cribbed a lot from a half-dozen arts and set up a school. It became more of a cult than a school, and I was only there a month. Later, I took fencing, which led to medieval rapier, some tae kwon do, karate, and finally some aikido, which has to be my favorite. I certainly studied it the longest. I've never actually advanced a belt in any given art, mostly because I could never afford to study one for any length of time, job changes, or other interruptions. (The karate school I was going to closed when the owner got picked up for child molestation.) Of all of these, the rapier combat actually saved my life. I took a knife away from a mugger with a walking stick, and left him barfing in the gutter, after I poked him sharply in the solar plexus.

Much later on, I became an instructor in the venerable art of "ching ching pow". I have my carry permit, and since I'm disabled, and physical grappling isn't really viable, my .45 will have to do.